Imagine a rad yet scroungy character from the wrong side of the tracks, partnered with a young woman from the right side of the tracks. They’re sitting at a table in the still of a room at some party in some studio space in Brooklyn, where he’s urging this girl to try drugs. Their dialogue is basically told in the lines of A Whole New World. A song that is not really about visiting world land marks by way of an oriental rug.

I can show you the world
Shining, shimmering, splendid

The new world in question is actually the consciousness achieved by the drugs. Objects appear to glow and sparkle, in this warm and luminous environment.

Tell me, princess, now when did
You last let your heart decide?

The ‘princess’ is accustomed to decisions being made by her royal family and advisers. In this case, her folks most likely work on wall street and collect nifty African art. Her inability to allow her emotions dictate her judgement is being challenged by the mysterious boy with the Capuchin monkey on his shoulder, that she swears wasn’t there before.

I can open your eyes
Take you wonder by wonder
Over, sideways and under
On a magic carpet ride

A direct homage to Steppenwolf’s ‘Magic Carpet Ride’. A 1968 anthem that parallels the experience of physical disorientation with a natural bewilderment for one’s surroundings.

A whole new world
A new fantastic point of view
No one to tell us no
Or where to go
Or say we’re only dreaming

This brings us back to that new found heightened perception, where the tripping lovers are free from the command of authority figures.

A whole new world
A dazzling place I never knew
But when I’m way up here
It’s crystal clear
That now I’m in a whole new world with you

Crystal clear, indeed.

Now I’m in a whole new world with you
Unbelievable sights
Indescribable feeling
Soaring, tumbling, freewheeling
Through an endless diamond sky

This dewy awareness is impossible to define, as she feels her body in perpetual motion, though she is standing still. Flying through the same exact endless diamond sky that Lucy found herself in, with kaleidoscope eyes.

A whole new world
Don’t you dare close your eyes
A hundred thousand things to see
Hold your breath – it gets better

The baggy pants wearing boy coaches the pointy slipper wearing girl. Not to close her eyes, less she wishes to have a bad trip by absorbing herself within the confines of her own thoughts. Instead she is urged to hold the spiraling smoke in her lungs – it gets better.

I’m like a shooting star
I’ve come so far
I can’t go back to where I used to be
A whole new world
Every turn a surprise
With new horizons to pursue
Every moment red-letter

Who knows what ‘red-letter’ even means. Probably some fancy strain of LSD.

I’ll chase them anywhere
There’s time to spare
Let me share this whole new world with you
A whole new world
That’s where we’ll be
A thrilling chase
A wondrous place
For you and me

This girl went from existing entirely under the jurisdiction of authority figures and material possessions to shooting across an endless diamond sky like a velvet spaceship under the rays of a blacklight. After visiting this new world, her reality will never be what it once was. Her hold on time has been relinquished, and she now has an uncultivated bedazzlement of day-to-day places and people that once seemed overtly customary.

This wondrous place can only be reached by substance, and it is special in how she and this gentleman go there together. It’s like a private Eden on an island surrounded by the trappings of day to day life. Though their relationship is based on comforting escape, it is ultimately a dangerous pastime. By the end of a ‘A Whole New World’, the princess is already despondent on giving up her entire life and chasing these false dreams anywhere.